Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology is widely used in integrated circuits. A commonly used method of processing substrates during CMOS device fabrication involves the use of fluorine-based plasma precursors, for example, in a plasma doping process. However, excessive fluorine radicals dissociated during the plasma doping process aggressively erodes the underlying CMOS structures on the underlying substrate, resulting in significant process integration issues, device performance degradation, and the like.
Therefore, a need exists for improved methods and apparatus for reducing excessive fluorine radicals in fluorine-based plasma substrate processes.